The United States’ war on CO2 is having no actual effect

March 4, 2024

The idea that our atmosphere is heating up to dangerous levels continues. We are told that the cure to this temperature increase is the reduction or elimination of carbon emissions (CO2).

Looking at how carbon emissions changed from 2000 to 2018, we find that the United States and Europe had reduced their emissions, with the U.S. reducing by 10 percent, and Europe reducing by 16 percent, according to data from the Global Carbon Budget 2018.

As meager as that might seem to climate activists, it is enormously better than what some other nations were doing. India, for example, had increased its emissions by 155 percent, and China had trounced India, defeating it with a 208 percent increase.

Why is CO2 a crisis in the U.S. and Europe if two nations — India and China — are producing almost 15 times the carbon emissions that the U.S. and Europe are eliminating? And, China has been building one new coal-fired power plant per week. 

And more to the point, why should we in the U.S. have to purchase items that produce less CO2 and are less efficient, less desirable and more expensive? Or, why are we are unable to buy or use anymore items that we prefer because of their carbon emissions when all of that makes absolutely no difference in the effort to reduce emissions due to the monumental lack of concern of India and China?

However, in light of all of this we should consider whether CO2 is actually a real problem.

The National Geographic Society and National Geographic magazine published an article which said that “Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, and 0.1 percent other gases. Trace amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and neon are some of the other gases that make up the remaining 0.1 percent.” 

So, CO2 and other gases combine for a grand total of just 1/10th of one percent of the atmosphere. But, let’s look deeper.

Yochanan Kushnir is a research professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in the Division of Oceans and Climate Physics of Columbia University. He explains that of those other gases, carbon dioxide is only 0.04 percent — 4/100ths of a percent — of the entire atmospheric mixture. 

That figure is confirmed by other scientists, who also tell us that 95 percent of that 0.04 percent comes from natural sources, not human activity. Still others say that plant life will do better if the CO2 level was doubled.

While the effort to reduce or eliminate CO2 has affected household and other items, it also had a big effect on a large economic element in our region.

A policy of the Barack Obama administration limited power plant emissions and reduced domestic coal production. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards policy left power plants with the option of purchasing costly upgrades if they were to stay in business. This forced many plants across the country to close up shop, according to John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research in West Virginia University’s John Chambers College of Business and Economics.

West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton noted that these regulations forced six West Virginia plants to close, and hundreds across the country due to the financial burdens the policy caused.

He also said that West Virginia lost nearly half of its coal production, dropping from 165 million tons to less than 90 million tons.

Damian Phillips of WVNews wrote last week that coal production improved somewhat after Donald Trump became President. And Hamilton noted that During Trump’s first year in office, coal production rose in West Virginia alone.

“The state’s coal production stayed about the same in Trump’s second year,” Hamilton said, “but by the time the pandemic was in full swing, production around the country shut down, and it took more than a year for it to recover.”

Those of us living in southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia and other coal-producing areas have seen first-hand the harmful economic effects of the Obama policy. It is a policy that, according to the data presented earlier, must have been based on political ideals rather than scientific evidence.

And Phillips quoted Hamilton as saying that “Energy producers have warned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Biden administration that continuing with these policies may upset the national power grid, increasing the likelihood for outages.”

Previous dire warnings about climate catastrophe include that space satellites showed a new ice age coming fast; that there was no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere; that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice; and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius’ 2014 warning that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." None of these and other predictions of catastrophe actually came to be.

Given the long list of doomsday prognostications that didn’t occur, their breathtaking contrariness to climate reality, and the minuscule amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should neither worry about, nor continue to combat CO2, and stop punishing the American people by mandating inferior products and unnecessary costs.

Is now really the right time to buy an electric vehicle?

November 15, 2022

One of the things the green movement strongly encourages is moving away from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles and replacing them with electric vehicles (EVs). Since EVs don’t burn gasoline or diesel fuel, they do not emit CO2 into the air, and this is one of the major advantages of EVs. There are also other positive things about EVs.

Some of those advantages, according to drivingelectric.com, are that they are simpler and more reliable. They are quiet and relaxing, but can also be fast and exciting. And since they have smaller engines and their very large batteries can be laid out underneath the vehicle, they have more luggage space and more legroom for passengers.

But there are other factors to the story.

Libertarian author, commentator, and consumer journalist John Stossel wrote an article published by the Daily Signal earlier this month addressing electric vehicles, explaining ways in which EVs are not the wonders their proponents would like for us to believe.

There is a rush to impose EVs on the public. For example, some states have banned gas-powered cars altogether. “California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order banning them by 2035,” Stossel wrote. “Oregon, Massachusetts, and New York copied California. Washington state’s politicians said they’d make it happen even faster, by 2030,” just several years from now.

Stossel quotes physicist Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute, who said, “Electric cars are amazing. But they won’t change the future in any significant way (as far as) oil use or carbon dioxide emissions.”

Stossel wrote: “Inconvenient fact 1: Selling more electric cars won’t reduce oil use very much. ‘The world has 15, 18 million electric vehicles now,’ says Mills. ‘If we [somehow] get to 500 million, that would reduce world oil consumption by about 10%. That’s not nothing, but it doesn’t end the use of oil.’

“Inconvenient fact 2: Although driving an electric car puts little additional carbon into the air, producing the electricity to charge its battery adds plenty. Most of America’s electricity is produced by burning natural gas and coal. Just 12% comes from wind or solar power.” “You have to mine, somewhere on Earth, 500,000 pounds of minerals and rock to make one battery,” Mills said.

“If you’re worried about carbon dioxide,” says Mills, “the electric vehicle has emitted 10 to 20 tons of carbon dioxide (from the mining, manufacturing, and shipping) before it even gets to your driveway.”

“Volkswagen published an honest study [in which they] point out that the first 60,000 miles or so you’re driving an electric vehicle, that electric vehicle will have emitted more carbon dioxide than if you just drove a conventional vehicle,” Mills added. You would have to drive an electric car “100,000 miles” to reduce emissions by just “20 or 30%, which is not nothing, but it’s not zero.”

Stossel then adds: “If you live in New Zealand, where there’s lots of hydro and geothermal power, electric cars pollute less. But in America, your ‘zero-emission vehicle’ adds lots of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.”

There is also the possibility of batteries catching fire. Breitbart reported that “In July, a battery fire caused an electric bus to burst into flames in Hamden, Connecticut. Luckily, no one died in the inferno, although two transit workers and two firefighters were hospitalized as a result of the blaze, and a federal investigation was triggered.”

EVs will work pretty well close to home. They can be recharged overnight in your garage. But when you take a 200 mile or longer trip, finding a convenient charging station when you need one, and charging your EV may take a few hours. This depends upon the vehicle’s battery, the charging rate of the charger, and perhaps how long you must wait in line to access a charger.

“The average price for a brand new EV is about $55,000,” according to the National Motorists Association. “That’s considerably higher than the average four-door sedan, which runs about $35,000, according to Kelly Blue Book. Tax credits and gas savings can save you money, however, it’s going to take a few years to make up a potential $20,000 difference.”

“Totaling all factors [purchase price, maintenance and fuel costs] total costs over the average use of the vehicles are $71,770 for EV’s and $58,664 for gasoline powered cars.”

And then there’s the cost of replacing the battery, which lasts from 8 to 15 years. Consumer Affairs “reached out to five mechanics and technicians from different parts of the U.S. to see how much an EV battery replacement costs for different vehicles, and the average results ranged from $4,489 all the way to a staggering $17,658.”

So, the picture of electric vehicles to help save our environment from CO2 is a fuzzy one. And when costs and other factors are figured in, an EV is not yet a viable choice for millions of vehicle owners, especially those living in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.

As technology evolves, how we produce electricity, the capacity of our electric grid, and the prices involved will improve. But that is years in the future. We have to stop pushing new ideas so hard, and wait until they are ready for large scale use.

New book takes a broader, more realistic view of fossil fuel use

June 28, 2022

In his new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less, Alex Epstein agrees that fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions are impacting our climate, and wrote that “I totally acknowledge that they have contributed to the 1ºC warming we’ve experienced over the last one-hundred-plus years, and they will contribute to further warming going forward.”

However, he contends that “the negative climate impacts of fossil fuels will be far, far outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels,” that their impact “would not be catastrophic but rather continue to be ‘masterable’ by ingenious human beings empowered by fossil-fueled machines.”

The advantages of fossil fuels, he wrote, is that their abundance and relatively low cost make them useful so that eventually they will benefit the billions of people who have little or no access to energy. “Fossil Fuels,” he wrote, are “providing four times more energy than all alternatives combined.”

Because of their low cost and reliability they have transformed our environment into “one that is unnaturally clean and unnaturally safe from climate danger.” And while their use did increase the CO2 level, that would be offset by the fossil-fueled machines that provide benefits, like irrigation equipment that counter drought, air-conditioning machines that help us live in very warm climates, and heating units for cold climates.

While conceding that fossil fuels do contribute CO2 to the environment, he called our attention to the excessive and often flat-out incorrect predictions of gloom and doom that have influenced how we do things.

Grossly incorrect predictions of climate doom have been put forth over the years. Highlighting some of these mistakes in not-too-distant history, Epstein provided examples of trusted news institutions wrongly warning us back in the 1970s:

* The Guardian, in 1974: “Space satellites show new ice age coming fast.”

* Newsweek, in 1975: “The cooling world: Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.”

* The New York Times, in 1978: “International team of specialists finds no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere.”

More recent predictions that are not included in Fossil Future have been just as wrong, and in the opposite direction, promising death and destruction from a warming world.

* In 2004, the U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that the U.S. Defense Department had told President George W. Bush that European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate, triggering nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world.

* In 2008, then-presidential candidate Al Gore predicted that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice.

* In 2009, Great Britain’s Charles, Prince of Wales, said that capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, and we have only 96 months to straighten things out.

* In 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, appearing with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." 

Even if you are not a senior citizen that has lived through all these false warnings, you probably realize that none of them has come to pass.

In fact, some positive things have occurred. Even though there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. air emissions — including carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrous oxides, Sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter — have been reduced from 300 million tons in 1970 to approximately 125 million tons in 2020, despite the increased use of fossil fuels.

This is because the currently used fossil fuels are cleaner than those used many years ago such as wood and animal dung, which were often burned indoors, and we have cleaner methods for using them.

Two other energy sources are not used very much: nuclear and hydroelectric, which Epstein says are discouraged because of the harm they do to the environment. But, he noted that the “radiation in the case of nuclear is trivial, and the waste has been safely managed for generations.” And for hydroelectric, arguing against those projects “in the name of free-flowing rivers … is clearly not focused on human flourishing” that it will provide.

Essentially, he suggests that these arguments greatly exaggerate the dangers of nuclear and hydroelectric, and essentially ignore the positive aspects they provide that will benefit humanity. 

What Epstein accomplishes is something not really complicated, but it is something rather rare; instead of taking one side or the other and pushing it, he accepts the strong points of both sides, and presents both of them. He makes the case that ought to be more broadly presented to us; that we must keep at the top of our thinking how we best serve the needs of the billions of people on Earth by making the most of fossil fuels, and in doing that we also manage the negatives of fossil fuels to prevent them from doing serious harm.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy terms this approach a “humanity-centric alternative to the anti-fossil fuel climate hysteria” so prevalent today.